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AUDIENCE SCORE

Stoic Photos

Movie Info

Inspired by actual events, director Uwe Boll's claustrophobic prison drama explores the chilling results of group psychosis. An inmate is discovered hanged in his cell, and when investigators begin interrogating the dead man's cellmates, the dehumanizing events that led to his gruesome demise gradually come into focus.

Audience Reviews for Stoic

Soulless drama with a lacking story, and poor cast, Stoic is a bland film that really has no point. The intentions to create a serious drama are wasted due to the visceral quality that the film possesses. The cast here are terrible, and the film takes on a poorly made for TV feel, that just doesn't feel right. Stoic however is not made for TV, it just feels that way. This is one of the few more serious films by director Uwe Boll, and although he tried his best at making an effective drama, the film is purely a waste due to the fact that the film's plot feels stitches together within an hour or so. Boll is notorious in making bad films, but at times he has made good films. However Stoic, although a step in the right direction, doesn't deliver anything worthwhile for viewers. As you watch Stoic, you realize how bleak it really is, and how depressing the finished product is. Uwe Boll fails at delivering a good drama, and the cast really don't stand out here. Stoic is a train wreck by a director who clearly can't grasp at making an effective genre picture. Don't go into this one expecting a great film, you'll be disappointed. Boll would make a few better films, but Stoic isn't one of them. However, it does show that is willing to venture into more dramatic territory, which is good because all of his video game adaptations are horrible. Watch a different film if you want a better drama. Stoic is one of those films that have redeeming aspects to make it a truly engaging film going experience.

Alex roy

Super Reviewer

½

Stoic explores the question of weather or not prison turns minor offenders into hardened criminals, by telling a true story that happened in 2006. The story is most defiantly an eye opener, but the truth is that it doesn't make for a very good movie. Four inmates are trapped in the same cell, twenty-three hours a day. Most of them are in prison for minor offenses, with sentences ranging from six months to six years. As the men play cards, three get suspicious of the fourth, and once they decide he's a cheater, they begin to torture and humiliate the man until the next morning, when one of them winds up dead. Edward Furlong is the only actor of recognition in this film, usually one of my favorite actors, but even he has a hard time making this story work. The truth is that no matter the situation, anytime you place four guys in a room and watch them for an hour and a half, it's bound to get boring. Stoic goes to extreme lengths to be beyond boring, because of it's perfectionist director, Uwe Boll. Boll has a reputation of doing things his own way and being a perfectionist about it. The constant changing of the camera angles as well as the inmates telling their own stories in cutaways, is somewhat clever, but ultimately there really isn't much here to base a film on. Stoic was a good idea, that poses an important question, through a shockingly true story, but it lacks the substances needed to entertain an audience. In other words it was one big bore of a movie that you should absolutely avoid.

Todd Smith

Super Reviewer

½

Until recently, it would have been unthinkable to associate Uwe Boll with the idea of social activist. This is the same man who has caused people so much pain and with his movies, ranging from bad to ridiculously bad to "You cannot unsee what you have seen" bad. The German director who has caused so many film and video game fans suffering seemed an unlikely candidate to seriously explore the suffering of others. And yet Boll's heart grew three sizes and he directed a slate of movies with a social conscience. His movie about the genocide in Darfur is still circling around, awaiting a release date, but let me stop to remind you that Uwe Freaking Boll directed a movie about a topical humanitarian crisis. This is akin to... Eli Roth directing an Edith Wharton adaptation ("From the director of Cabin Fever comes ... Ethan Frome!"). It just doesn't seem like an organic pairing. Boll is used to blood and boobs (both of the mammary kind and of the idiot variety), not social relevancy. You don't expect an exploitation filmmaker to shine a light on exploitation. While we await his Darfur movie, in the meantime is Stoic, a quick and cheap movie about three prison inmates (Edward Furlong, Sam Levinson, Steffen Mennekes) brutalizing their cellmate, Mitch (Shaun Sipos) when a bet goes wrong. It's based on a true story from a German juvenile detention center, so we're told.
So what kind of movie is Stoic, actually? Well, for starters it's an uncomfortable one. The movie aims to show the capability of human cruelty and how easy it is to become compliant within a group, to go along with the flow despite some murky moral hazards. The three cellmates end up kick starting a cycle of violence, each trying to top the last so as not to appear weak or to damage ego. Can this cycle of cruelty be stopped? The dehumanization leads to some rather brutal and disgusting acts of violence and degradation including forcing Mitch to eat his own vomit, dumping urine on the guy's face, raping him, and sodomizing him with a broom handle ("Just curiosity, I guess," explains one of his attackers). Despite all this, there are actual moments of restraint on Boll's part, particularly during the rape sequence. The audio drops out, the edits become jump cuts stuttering ahead through time, and I thought perhaps Boll was maturing. Needless to say this thought was torpedoed a tad when Boll later showcased the inmates rubbing the bloody broom handle over Mitch's unconscious mouth. Stoic is essentially a torture movie; it's 80 minutes of literal torture with some extra psychological justification tagged along for safe measure.
Where Stoic comes into issue is whether or not it possesses any merits to justify watching 80-some minutes or torture. The movie doesn't offer much in the way of psychological insights or rich characters. Watching people become increasingly hurtful is not the same as exploring the habits that make such escalating acts of barbarity occur. Boll and the actors pound us with the message that we're in prison and prison has its own operating system and everybody jockeys for position; Peter (Levinson) repeatedly tells us that he feels sorry but felt he had to participate or else they'd turn on him. It's all about having somebody weaker to take the fall. I'll give Boll credit that the amplification of events seems plausible given the circumstances, to the point that the three guys have come to the conclusion that there will be serious consequences for their actions unless they convince Mitch to go along with a fake suicide. The movie maintains believability even as things get more and more out of hand, which is commendable. But what isn't commendable is that there seems little reason for Stoic to exist. Normatively the movie is simple: three guys pick on another guy. The characters are all slight variations of one another based upon the level to process guilt and deception. During the interviews, we're given fleeting glimpses at denial and coping mechanisms, mainly lying ("I would've remembered something like that.") to self-rationalization ("I kept saying to myself, 'As long as it's not me.'"). There aren't many insights to be gleaned from the brief interviews, which serve as commentary.
Boll decided to make Stoic his Mike Leigh film, meaning that he had the basic outline of a story and told his actors to run with it while he filmed them. There was no script and all the dialogue was completely improvised. This does allow Stoic to maintain a naturalistic feel, however, it also means that the actors are beholden to tough guy clichés. The dialogue, particularly during the interrogation scenes, keeps falling back to a "you don't know what's it's like, man!" mantra. Here are some examples of bland dialogue that the actors came up with:
"What choice did I have?"
"You're either with them or against them."
"What don't you understand? If I didn't seem like I was apart of it, they'd kill me."
"I had no choice. They forced me."
"I want to lie because I don't want to be that person."
"I felt like there was no way out."
And because you knew it had to happen:
"I'm just as bad as the two of them because I didn't do anything to stop it."
You'll note that most of these dialogue examples belong to the Peter, the chattiest and most remorseful interviewee. Improvisation has its virtues but it can also lead to actors falling back on stuff they've seen in countless other genre examples, which means that the banal cliché dialogue all gets stirred together one more time.
In defense of Stoic, it may prove to be Boll's finest directorial effort yet. The handheld camera, sharp edits, and close angles copy the Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93) style of visuals, and yet the docu-drama copy works. The visual aesthetic improves the quality of the film and allows Boll many opportunities for interesting compositions and smart stylistic decisions with the economical space of the set. The interviews are shot as one static camera shot to contrast with the shaky, reactionary movement from within the cell. It may not be an original style, but then again Boll seems to adopt (some might say rip-off) a new style with every film. For Stoic, Boll's direction makes you feel in the middle of these awful incidents, and the pain feels even more real.
But is there any reason to really watch Stoic? The acting is mostly good, and maybe fans of Edward Furlong would like to see what he's been up to since 1998's Pecker and American History X. Perhaps the declaration of "Boll's best directorial effort" will appeal to maybe six or seven curious, and questionably masochistic, film fans. Due to Boll's German background, I can't help but wonder if his country's history influenced him to try a narrative experiment hat explores how easy it is to go along with something awful, how difficult it is to make a moral stand against the grain, and how easily circumstances can find momentum and get out of control. I wonder if Stoic is Boll's personal act of penance, of trying to understand a nation's actions (and inaction) and working through a lingering shroud of shame. Then again, I may be reading way more into this movie than was ever intended. It could have just been a lark for a quick buck/deutschmark. Stoic is a mildly interesting little filmic experiment from Boll. Due to its narrative simplicity and limited characterization, it can't offer much more than another voyeuristic slideshow of human degradation.
Nate's Grade: C